The BBC Propaganda Files: 11 Years On (Still Abusing Science)

There is nothing more guaranteed to arouse my anger than the abuse of science by the media, especially when that media takes £145 of my money every year, without my consent, whilst pretending to be vaguely accountable to me through my government. Fortunately, they use some of this money to produce cracking good comedy and drama programmes for my entertainment and delight; programmes like The Thick of It or Spooks. Unfortunately, they also use some of it to produce unmitigated, pure propaganda drivel and pump it into my home like so much silage. Most of the time, this nauseating brain-poop is disguised as 'current affairs' - sometimes ending up on Newsnight - or a 'factual' documentary. Sadly, last night I had the misfortune to witness one of these again, as it was the anniversary of 9/11.

The programme was The Conspiracy Files: 9/11 Ten Years On, which first aired last year but which has now migrated to the Yesterday channel. The version I've linked to here is on Vimeo and is slightly different to the one I saw last night, as it seems to have been somewhat re-edited, perhaps to remove some of the more laughable factual errors. Nevertheless, it is still full of astonishingly brazen deceptions. It would be incredibly tedious to go through every single one of these, so instead I shall focus on just one segment of the programme which deals with the forensic evidence of explosives found in dust from the 9/11 debris, from about 30 minutes until 38 minutes in the version to which I linked above. This should be sufficient to illustrate why this programme is nothing but propaganda. It also illustrates some uncomfortable truths about the academic establishment, of which I was once a member.

The programme introduces now-retired Professor Niels Harrit, formerly of Copenhagen University, who co-authored a paper published in 2009 by the science publisher, Bentham, in their Open Chemical Physics Journal, called Active Thermitic Material Discovered in Dust from the 9/11 World Trade Center Catastrophe. I've linked to the original paper, which is fairly accessible if you want to read it, but there is also a more concise summary for non-specialists here. The programme gives the strong impression that this is just the pet armchair theory of one eccentric retired chemistry professor. At no point does it mention that the paper was a collaborative effort by 9 authors; all accredited professional scientists, including chemists, physicists and engineers, most of them still practising professionals. 

The BBC make a lot of play out of the fact that the paper studies only 4 independent dust samples, where as the US Geological Survey and the forensics lab, RJ Lee, apparently studied many more. Of course, it is very difficult to get hold of uncontaminated dust samples from 9/11 these days, so 4 is quite good going. What the documentary fails to mention is that none of the previous studies attempted to look for explosives, as they were conducted for other purposes. Indeed, the RJ Lee report is totally consistent with Harrit's paper and lends further support to its conclusions by confirming the extremely high abundance (6% by particle count) of microscopic elemental iron spheres in the 9/11 dust. The only satisfactory explanation for this abundance of iron-rich microspheres is that they are the residue of a thermitic reaction and Harrit's paper demonstrates the formation of such spheres upon ignition of the thermitic material. Once again, this is not mentioned in the documentary.

At least the documentary does not resort to the kind of puerile ad-hominem garbage which is commonly found on so-called 'debunking' websites, such as the JREF forums. There it is common to find people referring to Bentham Open Chemical Physics as a 'vanity publication' or claiming (without any evidence) that Harrit's paper was somehow not peer-reviewed. The claims stem from the fact that most critics don't understand how scientific publishing works (because they are not scientists) or what open journals are for. Harrit's team published in an open journal so that the paper could be downloaded for free by members of the general public. Had they published anywhere else, you and I would have had to pay a hefty fee (often £20 or more) just to read their work. Instead, open journals charge the authors' institution directly for each paper they publish, but only after it has been through the same peer-review process as any other journal. Open journals are therefore the ideal medium for work of wide public interest such as Harrit's.

So, thankfully the BBC weren't so stupid as to make baseless and easily refuted claims about the reputation of the journal or directly about the reputation of the papers' nine authors (despite only mentioning one of them). However, it did present the opinions of a couple of experts of its own to try to refute the findings of Harrit's paper: Professors Richard Fruehan and Chris Pistorius of Carnegie Mellon University. They are specialists in metallurgy, whose jobs and careers are entirely dependent on grants from the US government, of course. They ought to be sufficiently qualified to have a valid opinion on Harrit's paper, although their independence must be considered questionable, at the very least. Was it not possible for the BBC to interview some non-US-based academics, preferably including a specialist in nano-particle chemistry? Apparently not.

At one point, Pistorius betrays the fact that he almost certainly hasn't even read Harrit's paper, as he suggests that what they found may simply have been red primer paint, as painted onto the steel columns of the WTC. This possibility was explicitly considered in the paper and comprehensively rejected for several reasons (see section 7 p. 27-28), not least being the fact that paint does not undergo a very fast and highly energetic exothermic reaction when heated to 430 deg C. Paint also dissolves in industrial solvent, where as Harrit's thermitic material does not. If the BBC had bothered to ask Professor Harrit about the primer paint hypothesis, he would no doubt have laughed, before calmly explaining why it's a total nonsense.

At another point, Prof Fruehan claims that he can find "almost anything" in any sample of dust. Really? What an extraordinarily stupid remark. If that were so, there would never be any point examining any dust sample for anything, since we know we will find literally everything in it, including nano-thermite explosives, presumably. I'm sure Prof Fruehan is not an idiot, so I can only conclude that his remark was designed to mislead, to shrug off the findings of Prof Harrit's team as somehow irrelevant and not worthy of discussion, despite the fact that they cannot be refuted. 

Fruehan also makes the highly disingenuous remark that Harrit's thermitic material contains less energy per kilogram than ordinary paper. Wow! This point seems like a clincher and is seized upon with glee by the BBC film-makers as they cut to a shot of a pile of paper, burning away tamely. It seems impressive and if you're not a scientist you will immediately get the idea that whatever it is Harrit found in the dust can't possibly have been capable of blowing up the twin towers. (The great irony here is that the official explanation actually does claim that the towers fell as a result of ordinary fires, fuelled by stuff like wood, paper and plastic, long after the jet fuel had burned off, but never mind). For a moment, I was flummoxed too, until I remembered that energy is not the same thing as power, and certainly not the same as temperature. Power is energy per unit of time. Of course, paper (like wood) is quite energy dense but it burns slowly, releasing its energy over a relatively long time (i.e. with low power). That's why wood is a fairly effective fuel which can keep a fire going for hours. Fortunately, wood fires do not explode with great force, but some less energy-dense materials can, and do. The actual power density of Harrit's thermitic material is shown below (blue line), compared to a known sample of commercially available nano-thermite (red line). The x-axis is the input temperature to a differential scanning calorimeter, which rises linearly over time:

Fig (29) from Harrit's paper comparing power density of thermitic material found in 9/11 dust (blue line) with commercially available nano-thermite (red line).

The graph above shows that Harrit's thermitic material ignites at a lower temperature and burns with more power, over a shorter time, than a sample of highly engineered, commercially available nano-thermite. Both are capable of generating much higher output temperatures, in excess of 3000 deg C, easily capable of slicing through steel (melting point 1540 deg C), and both can also generate high pressures, comparable to a conventional high-explosive. Both are less energy-dense than paper, but that is a completely irrelevant and specious fact, calculated to mislead viewers. 

Nano-thermite has many times the power density of ordinary thermate, because the particle size is so much smaller, but the output temperature and pressure depend on many other factors, including the exact volume and geometry of the space in which the ignition occurs, as well as the ignition method. However, if you want a very good demonstration that even ordinary thermate is more than capable of slicing easily and cleanly through a steel beam, the professional engineer Jonathan Cole (from Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth) has made this excellent video. Nano-thermite/thermate is simply much more efficient and creates explosive pressure in addition to very high temperatures.

Clearly, Prof Fruehan must know the difference between energy and power, so why does he make that specious remark about paper? The only reasonable conclusion I can draw is that he is deliberately trying to misdirect the audience, with all the skill of a practised liar. But perhaps I'm being harsh. What can he do? Does he really have the option to admit the truth? Only a very brave or a very foolish academic would rock the boat by calling into question the lies of his or her own paymasters in the government.

The physicist, Prof Steven Jones was one of the co-authors of the Harrit paper. He found out to his cost what happens when you assert your academic freedom against the establishment. He was a well-respected professor at  Brigham Young University, until 2006 when he started to raise questions about the official explanations for the collapses of the twin towers. His only crime was independent thought, for which he was sacked from his post, possibly as an example to any other academics who might get ideas about expressing their views. There is no such thing as academic freedom. He who pays the piper calls the tune, and these days the piper is paid either by the military-industrial-security complex or by the government - which in turn is paid by big business, including the military-industrial-security complex. I know this because I was an academic (at one of the 'top 5' science universities in the world, supposedly) and I kept my eyes and ears open.

My message to the BBC is this: Stop abusing science. Stop abusing scientists. Stop pumping propaganda into my home, at my expense. Make more good comedies and drama instead. Thank you.

Deport Clarkson and Philips to Norway

I wish to join the growing chorus of voices in the media calling for the immediate deportation of Melanie Philips, Jeremy Clarkson and other 'hate preachers' to Norway, considering how dangerous their views are as an inspiration to terrorists such as Anders Breivik, currently on trial there for mass murder. What? Oh sorry, I appear to have got that wrong. Apparently, the media are calling for the deportation of so-called Muslim 'cleric' and erstwhile MI5 asset, Abu Qatada. It's an easy mistake to make. After all, Qatada has plenty in common with Clarkson and Philips: he's a great fan of cultural purity and has no time for lefties. One difference is that Clarkson has never been found guilty of any crime in the UK, whilst Qatada has spent years in prison -  for holding abhorrent opinions and inciting violence. However, Clarkson was once prosecuted for a speeding offence and he has definitely broken the law, many times. It seems unlikely that Qatada will be prosecuted here for any actual terrorism offences, since that would be embarrassing to MI5, among others.

Hate preachers

Abu Qatada has been accused of being a spiritual inspiration for terrorists, such as Richard Reid (the 'shoe-bomber') and tapes of his sermons were allegedly found in the flat occupied by Mohammed Atta in Hamburg before the 9/11 attacks. Curiously, a copy of the Top Gear Annual was also found in Atta's flat ... No, OK, I am (probably) making that bit up, although I don't know - he may also have had a copy of Razzle under his bed. One thing I'm not making up, however, is that both Clarkson and Philips were quoted approvingly in Anders Breivik's manifesto. Philips in particular is quoted extensively for her opposition to multiculturalism, an opposition heartily endorsed by Qatada too, as well as many of the newspapers now shouting for his deportation. *Irony Klaxon*

As for Breivik, allow me a small digression: the media have consistently sought to portray him as a psychotic loner and delusional fantasist whose views are marginal to the society in which he is embedded. None of these claims stand up to examination. Breivik displays no symptoms of psychosis whatsoever - no hallucinations and no disconnection with everyday reality. He is almost certainly a psychopath, but that is merely an extreme personality type. He may also be considered delusional in some ways, but no more so than the writers he admires, such as Philips. In fact, his delusions are extremely widely held and they are promoted almost daily by British tabloid newspapers: I remember reading a Sun headline screaming that Muslims would be a majority in the UK within about 20 years. Over half a million people voted for the BNP in 2010 and nearly a million voted for UKIP. Similar numbers support the EDL. If Breivik is delusional, then he is certainly not alone in his opinions and scarcely a marginal figure. He was also a 3rd degree Freemason, affiliated with an Oslo lodge, at the time of his crimes. Before you go shouting 'conspiracy theorist!' at me, I should point out that I don't regard this fact as terribly significant, except to illustrate that Breivik was far from being a 'loner'. In fact, he was fairly gregarious and clearly had connections to people with power and influence in Norwegian society.

Breivik's connections go well beyond Norway, however, as he seems to have met senior members of the EDL and claims to be in a more secretive organisation he calls the Knights Templar, supposedly founded in London in 2002. Could there be a deeper connection between the founders of the Knights Templar (a name with obvious Freemasonic undertones) and the shadowy and wealthy figures who channel funding to the EDL too? Perhaps. If we had been talking about al-Qaeda, the media would immediately have taken this as irrefutable proof of a global conspiracy but we'll reserve judgement and merely say that Breivik is well-connected and may not have been acting entirely in isolation. Just because various police forces have been unable (or unwilling?) to investigate those connections in much depth does not mean that Breivik must be making them up. Breivik certainly never lacked for money, even after several business failures. One has to wonder whether his parents (divorced when he was 1 year old) were merely overindulgent or whether he had financial support from other quarters? Would his mother, on only a nurse's salary, have been happy to provide the tens of thousands of dollars Breivik spent on tons of fertiliser, farm equipment, guns and fragmentation rounds, in between playing video games at home and failing to get a job? If only we all had such an understanding mother.

Enough of the digression. I simply wanted to make it clear that Breivik is no isolated monster, but a product of social and political forces which have very wide and mainstream currency, despite the understandable attempts of his various mentors to distance themselves from him. The enthusiasm of the media for the deportation of 'hate preachers' like Abu Qatada stands in naked, hypocritical contrast to their total silence on their own complicity in creating the paranoid, Islamophobic hysteria which feeds not only Breivik's murderous delusions, but those of  millions who share his views. If they looked into a mirror, they would see not Breivik's cold smile, but the face of Abu Qatada; the man they hate so much that they actually, secretly love him - and his opposition to multiculturalism. It's strange that he's still here. After all, we had no trouble illegally transporting terror suspects to be tortured in Libya and whenever the US tells us to deport one of our citizens to them, we always comply with great haste and without a word of censure from the European Court of Human Rights.

So why is the 'will-they-won't-they?' Qatada deportation pantomime still dragging on? Because it's great entertainment for the masses. It serves a whole host of useful purposes: burying other news, making Theresa May look resolute and strong on 'terrorism', whipping up more anti-Muslim sentiment for the divide-and-rule strategy of the British elites. If Qatada ever does get deported, they'll be sorry to see him go. I wish I could say the same about Jeremy Clarkson and Melanie Philips.

Iran vs the Petrodollar: World War Three?

The US is raising tensions with Iran, possibly as part of the build-up to a war which has been threatened, on and off, for at least a decade. The US has had a unilateral trade embargo against Iran going back to 1995. There are reasons to be alarmed now, however, as the US has called for an international embargo of Iranian oil, to which Iran responded by threatening to close the Straits of Hormuz, through which about 40% of the world's oil supplies pass. Only the EU has responded positively to the US call, though, as China, Russia, India and even key NATO-member, Turkey, have all firmly rejected the US position.


If you live in the West, you could be forgiven for thinking that this is all about Iranian nuclear ambitions. The media narrative is that the West wants to put pressure on Iran to halt its supposed nuclear programme. Every now and then, hysterical claims appear in Western media outlets, that Iran is on the brink of developing nuclear weapons and intends to use them against Israel, Southern Europe or perhaps give them to terrorists. A Telegraph story from 6 years ago (Iran 'could go nuclear within three years') is fairly typical. This is propaganda but it is not all scaremongering, as Iran does have a nuclear enrichment programme, although the informed consensus is that it is still quite a long way from developing a nuclear weapons capability, let alone an actual bomb.

Cartoon from www.hermes-press.com

Iran has been repeatedly threatened by Israel and the US, who both possess nuclear weapons. No doubt Iran would feel a lot more secure if it did have some nuclear capability of its own as a deterrent to its belligerent enemies, but it is still co-operating with IAEA inspectors and it clearly has no current intention to develop a nuclear device, so Western accusations are knowingly premature and exaggerated, as they were against Iraq in 2002.


Still, the hawks would argue that Iran is a rogue state; part of the infamous 'axis of evil' identified by George W Bush, including Iraq and North Korea. Therefore, any attempt to stop the Iranian nuclear programme must be justified, as is any attempt at 'regime change', despite the fact that we scarcely batted an eyelid at North Korea's nuclear programme. Does this argument really stand up to scrutiny? There is no doubt that Iran is one of the most repressive states in the world, in terms of its attitude towards internal dissent. According to the Economist Intelligence Unit's Democracy Index, Iran ranks 159th out of 167 states on its (slightly subjective) scale of democratic freedom (North Korea is bottom). That's pretty bad, but do remember that Saudi Arabia actually ranks two places lower, at 161st. We sell all the arms and torture equipment the Saudis could possibly want, because they are among our staunchest allies in the region. Iran is apparently the enemy of democracy, where as Saudi Arabia isn't. This kind of doublethink illustrates clearly that freedom and democracy have got nothing to do with our policy towards Iran.


History also attests to Western hypocrisy with respect to Iran. You will almost never hear it mentioned in Western mainstream media (including the BBC of course) that Iran used to be a relatively democratic state, until an infamous coup in 1953, instigated by Britain and the US. This is also one of those vital bits of history you will never, ever learn in a British or American school. I'm guessing this is because it must be rather embarrassing for countries which boast of being 'democratic' and 'free' to be caught red-handed overthrowing democratically elected foreign leaders for rather sordid reasons like oil rights. So the reason that Iran is a paranoid autocracy today is because that is how the US and Britain wanted it to be. When it comes to making foreign policy, democracy is a total pain in the arse, frankly.


Britain and the US installed the Shah as Dictator in 1953. His brutal rule was ended by a broad-based revolt of the Iranian people in 1979, but democracy never returned to Iran, as the revolution was taken over by Islamic fundamentalists. Democracy would be too easy for the West to undermine, so Iran became a repressive Islamic republic, its paranoia somewhat justified. Thus, from the viewpoint of history, it is the US and Britain, not Iran who are the  major aggressors in the region, constantly meddling in the internal affairs of other countries in order to secure oil supplies and lucrative contracts for their transnational oil companies. Indeed, since its foundation in 1783, there has scarcely been a single year in which the US has not been at war. Most of these have been wars of aggression beyond US soil.


OK, but surely Iran is a major sponsor of international terrorism, right? You could say that. Iran is a sworn enemy of Israel and does give material support to the highly unsavoury groups, Hezbollah and Hamas, although some might describe them as 'freedom fighters'. As always, the definition of 'terrorist' is subjective: The US provided support to the brutal, right-wing rebel Contras against the democratically elected left-wing government of Nicaragua (ironically by illegally supplying arms to Iran), and numerous similar organisations throughout Latin America. Some might call this 'sponsoring terrorism' and there are dozens of other examples of the US and the UK giving support to terrorist organisations all over the world, except we tend to label them as 'rebels' when they are on our side.


More recently, it appears the West or Israel have been waging a covert war inside Iran, murdering Iranian scientists, the latest with a sophisticated car bomb, and sabotaging nuclear facilities, all without any legal justification. This is surely terrorism, by any definition, but we seem to be OK with it. How many people have been killed by Iranian covert operations in Europe or the US? None, although there are lots of unproven and rather wild allegations of Hezbollah attacks in unlikely corners of the world, like Argentina, although the latter may well turn out to be one of a number of Israeli Mossad false flag operations. Also, how many wars of aggression has Iran started, compared to the US or Britain? I think the last time Iran started a major war may have been around the 6th century AD, although I may be wrong. That's hardly a very aggressive country, although I'll grant that a possible 21st-century Sassanid revival could be a complete game-changer.


So, if it isn't terrorism or Iran's nuclear ambitions that are driving us towards war, what is it? The answer is the same as always, of course: oil. But there's more at stake this time. The future of the dollar as the world's reserve currency is on the line and that is no trifling matter. The main aim of Western powers appears to be the same as in 1953: regime change. Patrick Cockburn in the Independent argues that this is primarily due to Israeli manipulation and provocation, although he also points out that the US has been sponsoring Jundullah Sunni insurgents inside Iran to carry out terror attacks since 2008. There is no doubt that the West, especially the US has always wanted to regain control of Iran's huge oil fields. What worked in 1953 could work again; a covert war to destabilise the country from within, combined with external pressure, to force a coup favourable to Western interests.


I do not think that the US is in any position to mount a successful full-scale invasion and occupation of Iran, despite all the sabre-rattling and even a limited naval operation in the Strait of Hormuz would be highly risky. The US is militarily stretched and domestic sentiment is weary of large-scale ground wars. Russia has also signalled repeatedly that a US attack on Iran risks provoking a much larger conflict. Both Russia and China have considerable interests in Iran and they may well be ready to defend those with more than diplomacy. Iran certainly has the potential to spark World War 3 and even US military hawks are - hopefully - not crazy enough to risk that. Hence the strategy is to provoke internal revolt, as in Libya and Syria.


The extent of Asian opposition to the US-EU-Israeli policy towards Iran is made very clear by the earth-shattering news that India has made a deal to buy Iranian oil using gold instead of dollars, to circumvent US-EU financial sanctions. The Israeli DEBKAfile agency also reports that Russia and China are ready to follow suit. Could this be Israeli misinformation designed to provoke US military action? Possibly, but the news has scarcely been reported at all in the Western media and it certainly rings true to me, since several countries have been making moves towards dumping the dollar in recent years. This would ultimately be catastrophic for the US economy and its hegemonic position in the world.


Ever since 1971, the US has been able to write blank cheques by printing dollars, no longer linked to gold or silver. Initially, this was to pay for the Vietnam War. They got away with this because other countries needed to hoard dollars to pay for oil and any surplus was stored in US Treasury bonds, allowing the US to run endless budget deficits very cheaply. Hence, as long as oil trade increased and was conducted in dollars, the US could print money without causing too much inflation at home. If the dollar stops being the world's reserve currency, all those foreign-held dollars will soon come home to roost, probably resulting in hyperinflation. China is one of the largest holders of US dollars, so if China were to start paying for oil in gold, that would be very bad news indeed for the US. It is perhaps no surprise that the wars against Iraq and Libya followed soon after those countries stopped selling oil in dollars.


As China, Russia, India and Turkey clearly have no intention of joining any sanctions on Iran, it is obvious that they will only serve to hurt Europe, causing the price of oil to rise. European nations already reeling from the effects of the banking crisis, eurozone instability and counter-productive austerity policies seem hell-bent on collective suicide. The last thing they need is an inflationary oil-shock but this is what they are inviting, all for the sake of indulging US and Israeli belligerence.


Western hubris is likely to precipitate a major shift in world power to the East and Iran could well be the catalyst for this, although it may not require an apocalyptic military conflict. If Europe's (including Britain's) leaders had any sense (which they don't), they would grow a collective backbone and take a course independent of the US and Israel, in readiness for a world in which the US no longer calls the shots. Finally, I would observe that US attempts to repeat their 1953 trick of sparking a coup in Iran may ultimately backfire so severely, leading to an economic collapse, that it could result in some kind of popular revolt in the USA. Wouldn't that be poetic justice?

Dale Farm: Ethnic Cleansing in the UK

How close does a film have to come to 1930s  Nazi propaganda before it becomes appropriate to draw that comparison, without causing offence? I don't know, but I do know that watching last night's Dispatches programme on Channel 4 about the Traveller community at Dale Farm made me feel extremely uncomfortable and reminded me of nothing more than those vicious and ultimately successful attempts to demonise an entire population of 'undesirables'. Propaganda usually betrays itself by the sin of omission: it is what the film did not say and did not ask which proves without doubt the intention of its makers.


The local council (Basildon, Essex) is trying to evict a community of Travellers who, they say, do not have planning permission to occupy the land which they own and keep their trailers there. The council say this is because it is Green Belt land which no one should be allowed to use for this purpose. This is very strange, since the land was originally concreted over by the council themselves many years before, when the land was allowed to be used as a scrapyard by its previous owner. Here is Ray Bocking, the man who sold his scrapyard to the Travellers, explaining the history of the site:

Clearly, the land is a brownfield site, but curiously, last night's Dispatches film failed to mention any of this. For a film purporting to investigate the issues, this is extremely odd. They also failed to ask the most obvious question of all: why does the council refuse planning permission for Travellers to park their trailers and live on a site which was previously a scrapyard? Surely the council would have been delighted to explain exactly why they are happy for Dale Farm to be used for disposing of cars for scrap metal but not happy for a community of Travellers, having bought it, to live on it in their non-scrap-metal caravans? Even the United Nations has criticised Basildon Council's position and called for the evictions to be halted, whilst the UK government has blocked attempts at mediation. This is nothing to do with protecting Green Belt land, nor is it about interpretations of the law: it is simply a matter of what is right or wrong.


The film's glaring refusal to ask this most obvious of questions, or even to mention that the site had been a scrapyard, clarifies its real intention: to justify Basildon Council's ethnic cleansing of an unpopular group of people. The Dispatches film did everything it could to feed anti-Traveller prejudices, which are already ubiquitous. The film insinuated that Travellers generally were prone to criminal and anti-social behaviour, even though many of the examples they used to illustrate this had nothing to do with the particular community at Dale Farm. The narrator even interviewed a police officer about criminality among Travellers but waved away his very reasonable attempts to bring some balance and nuance to the discussion.


It is not only TV news and documentaries that spew poisonous propaganda about unpopular minorities, of course. The Daily Mail was up to its usual game today, with absolutely no regard for facts, totally inventing a quote from a friend of mine who is at Dale Farm to show solidarity with the community there.  


As far as most people in Britain are concerned, Travellers are anti-social criminals. Full stop. This is precisely what most non-Jewish people thought about Jews in the 19th century. Anti-Semitism was rife then and Jews tended to live in inner-city immigrant ghettos such as the East End of London, where crime was also high. The same attitudes prevailed towards black and Irish immigrants in the 1950s through until very recent times. Thankfully, few people today can get away with making sweeping generalisations about the 'black community' being prone to criminality, even though many people still think that way and the fact remains that crime is always higher in poor areas, where ethnic minorities tend to live.


What is most worrying is that there is absolutely no taboo on stereotyping and defaming Travellers. They are seen as fair game and it is open season all year round. It only takes a single member of the Travelling community to commit a crime and everyone seems happy to see that as part of a general tendency towards criminality in everyone labelled as a Traveller. Anti-Traveller sentiment covers a wide spectrum. I have otherwise intelligent liberal-minded lefties telling me that Travellers are homophobic, misogynistic, traditionalists who have nothing in common with us more enlightened folk, although they wouldn't describe Muslims in the same terms. I don't know for sure but if this is true of some of them, to some degree, I find it ironic that Conservative Basildon Council is trying to evict such natural Tory voters, who must have a lot in common with their neighbours there in Essex.


At the other end of the spectrum, there are undoubtedly those who see Travellers as sub-human vermin, to be expelled or even eradicated. Films like last night's Dispatches only serve to legitimise the most extreme hatred. Anti-Semitism started simply as unchallenged day-to-day prejudice which became received wisdom, the logical conclusion of which was the Holocaust. It is no coincidence at all that European gypsies were also among those groups exterminated by the Nazis during World War Two, suffering a quarter of a million deaths - proportionately more than any other group except the Jews. We seem to be taking our first small steps down the same path here today, at Dale Farm. That path leads eventually to Auschwitz, Treblinka and Sobibor. Gypsies have travelled it before, when they were forced to wear black badges, whilst the Jews wore yellow.